34 pages • 1 hour read
Jean GenetThe Maids
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Solange
Solange is a maid in her early 30s, and she is Claire’s older sister. She is consumed with self-disgust, which she blames on Madame, and preoccupied with hatred for dirt and filth. The first part of her name is the word sol, which translates as “dirt” or “soil” in French. Solange repeatedly refers to herself and her sister as disgusting and filthy, and her name suggests that Solange’s filthiness is something that has been inevitable and inescapable since birth. As a maid, Solange’s endless task is to clean up filth that always returns to be cleaned again. Although Solange and Claire are intricately tied to each other and often trade traits and dominance, Solange is overall angrier and wiser than her sister. Solange also believes that she deserves hatred and punishment. In both instances of the roleplaying ritual, Solange takes on the role of Claire rather than playing herself, even though she is a maid too. By becoming Claire, Solange both exposes her sister to Madame’s punishment and abuse and protects her from that abuse by taking it for her.
Claire
Claire, also a maid in her early 30s, is Solange’s younger sister. Claire maintains a rich fantasy life through the stories she writes in her letters and through her secret games of pretend while everyone else is asleep. The two sisters are codependent, and sometimes Claire picks up Solange’s anger and hatred when Solange lets it go, but they are otherwise direct opposites. In French, clair means “light” or “clear.” Claire was not born to stay in filth. Madame recognizes that Claire is beautiful and bright, and that she could have more than life as a maid, but Madame also acknowledges that Claire must feel bound to Solange as her only family. Unlike Solange, Claire doesn’t dream about revenge. She dreams of fulfilling her potential, which inheriting from Madame will allow her to do. Although Solange disdains Claire’s nighttime pretending, Claire also manages to spark Solange’s fantasies with her stories. In the end, by drinking the poison, Claire manages to both become Madame and please her sister by allowing Solange to protect her from suffering.
Madame
By the time Madame appears onstage halfway through the play, Claire and Solange have created a vivid image of her character for the real Madame to either affirm or contradict. In Claire’s performance Madame is cruel and hateful, not just dismissing Solange-as-Claire but also abusing her. When the maids perform the ceremony at the end, the trading of angry insults is a central piece of the performance. At the end of the play, Solange imagines that Madame is annoyed and indifferent to Claire’s death. In actuality, Madame is self-absorbed, insensitive, and thoughtless, but she believes that she has given her maids a better life than they would have achieved without her. Madame is oblivious to the lives her maids lead and believes that her suffering eclipses all other suffering. The cruelty that Claire and Solange see in her is a projection of their own self-hatred. Unlike the maids, Madame is only known by her title rather than her name. In one sense, this is a mark of her status. Madame is presented in relation to her maids, who must address her formally, while the maids are only called by their first names. When Solange describes the status that she receives through infamy, she calls herself Mademoiselle. In another sense, identifying Madame solely by her title takes away her individuality, and she becomes a stand-in for all privileged, wealthy women.
